Re: [tlug] X11 Session Manager Setup

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

On 2008-10-30 10:00 +0900 (Thu), Edward Middleton wrote:

> Sounds like a nice frankentop ;)

You mean there's something wrong using the programs in a modular way as
they were designed to be used?

> Any particular reason for going with
> that combination, apart from being a masochist ;)

Yeah. It's because with my custom configuration of fvwm I'm about ten
times as productive with simple things such as opening, moving and
resizing windows, starting programs, and so on.

I'm not sure that preferring a couple of keystrokes and a simple mouse
movement in half a second to several seconds of more painful (i.e.,
requring more movement and more precision) mousing really makes me a
masochist, but each to his own.

> Something like Xfce 4[1] and Gentoo might be less painful and possibly
> more like what you are after.

This is what I don't get about Linux guys. Why is it that every time I
want to use a different program, or even don't want to use a particular
program, they want me to change distributions?

Does gnome-session run so differently under Gentoo than under Ubuntu? Is
Metacity not running at all when I'm using Gentoo somehow different from
it not running at all when I'm running Ubuntu?

And do I really want to go through every desktop Linux box in the
office, removing Ubuntu and installing not only Gentoo but the full
Gnome environment (so that the other users don't have switch)? Somehow
just installing adding the fvwm2 package and running "fvwm --replace"
seems easier.

Anyway, I had a look at the tour page of Xfce. It contains a long list
of things that I'd turn off (desktop icons, file manager, etc.), just as
I've turned them off in my current environment.

I don't see much point in changing window managers, since I've got
fvwm2 configured very comfortably, and configuring another is not
only a multi-day process, but it's also the case that many other window
managers don't have the level of customizability to do what I want
anyway.

So that more or less leaves us with the session manager, which I'd be
happy to seriously consider replacing, if you think it's going to make
my life better. What's the Xfce session manager called, and what will it
do for me that gnome-session won't?

Also, does Xfce provide all the same hooks for gnome-based applications
for dealing with how menus look and all that junk, or do I still end up
installing gnome anyway to manage that?

> There is a tool for handling session management with gnome but it never
> seemed to work properly for me, and as I have removed gnome I can't even
> tell you what it is called.

It's gnome-session-properties. Seems to work ok, after a bit of getting
used to the interface. (You may have tripped over some of the interface
issues.)

cjs
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Curt Sampson       <cjs@example.com>        +81 90 7737 2974   
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